Announcement: Windows Media Player Plus! 2.5 is now available for download. This update adds full Unicode support, 'Find in library' for Windows Media Player 12, support for Windows 8, and a whole bunch of bugfixes and improvements. Updating is highly recommended.

See the Version History page for a detailed list of what's new and what has been fixed.

Hello, I've been getting errors from WMP Plus 2.5, while on Windows XP Home Edition (32-bit, FYI). After downloading the old 2.1 version (by changing the url in my download manager), the errors have stopped, so I guess there must be some non-XP-friendly code in there (). Here are my problems:

1. When I open WMP, I get a dll error: "An unexpected error has occurred while loading Windows Media Player Plus! Please contact the author if the problem persists. Exception Exception in module WMPPlus.dll at 002b700. CryptAquireContext failed."

2. Party Shuffle list is ALWAYS empty.

3. When I try to search through my library, I get another error message, telling me to report the error to Microsoft (you all know the one ).

3.5 If I try to search for something with spaces, Windows Media Player closes without warning.

My main system still runs XP SP3 and use WMP Plus 2.5 without any problems here, so there must be something else going on. Do you also have SP3 installed? Are you also using WMP 11?

The first error is related to Party Shuffle so that immediately explains why the Party Shuffle playlist remains empty. I'm not quite sure yet what exactly the cause is though.

Regarding problem 3, I assume that you're using WMP's Search field at the top? Does it make a difference if you start typing immediately or if you click in the Search field first?

I am using SP3, with all the lastest updates. Likewise for WMP 11, l. And yes, I am using the search field at the top. Whether it crashes immediately or not seems to depend on whether I search for something with spaces.

Also, I am having other problems with WMP. First off, I can't get my portable device to use MTP, which is unfortunate because this device was never able to effectively detect added/deleted/changed files Mass Storage Class mode. When I just now tried to fix this by reinstalling WMP, I got an error saying something like "Windows Media Player Install could not complete." I am wondering could these problems be related?

Which columns are you referring to, and what exactly do you mean with open/edit screen?

What happens when you try to choose the columns? Do you get an error message?

When you open an album, a screen appears which allows you to edit information listed in columns (as - Composer, Contributing Artist, Rating etc.). You can choose the columns shown from the Organise Layout panel, but album, artist and genre will now only appear horizontally by the album art as total album entries. Previously you could right click on a vacant part of the top bar to add these columns vertically so that they could be edited individually. Nothing happens if you right click now, not even an error message.

I am using SP3, with all the lastest updates. Likewise for WMP 11, l. And yes, I am using the search field at the top. Whether it crashes immediately or not seems to depend on whether I search for something with spaces.

In the meantime, I've been able to reproduce the crash when searching for something with a space. The crash is a direct result of the error message at WMP startup, just like the empty Party Shuffle playlist. It happens because WMP Plus simply didn't initialize properly.

Does WMP also crash when you search for something without spaces? On my system, it only crashes when I type a space.

Now I just need to find out why the error message gets displayed in the first place. This can only be done with a special debug version of WMP Plus. Is it OK if I send you a download link to this version by PM? (this will be somewhere later this week)

QUOTE

Also, I am having other problems with WMP. First off, I can't get my portable device to use MTP, which is unfortunate because this device was never able to effectively detect added/deleted/changed files Mass Storage Class mode. When I just now tried to fix this by reinstalling WMP, I got an error saying something like "Windows Media Player Install could not complete." I am wondering could these problems be related?

These problems are unlikely to be related to WMP Plus. I suggest that you ask for help in the Windows 7 Media Forum, as that's the place for WMP support.

QUOTE (sinecure @ Jan 14 2013, 00:15)

When you open an album, a screen appears which allows you to edit information listed in columns (as - Composer, Contributing Artist, Rating etc.). You can choose the columns shown from the Organise Layout panel, but album, artist and genre will now only appear horizontally by the album art as total album entries. Previously you could right click on a vacant part of the top bar to add these columns vertically so that they could be edited individually. Nothing happens if you right click now, not even an error message.

I still don't know what you mean with Organize Layout panel and top bar, but based on your description you might be looking for Details view but are in Expanded tile view instead. To switch, click the little arrow on the left of the Search field and select Details. By the way, this has nothing to do with WMP Plus.

If that's not it then I'm still confused. Please show what you mean by posting a screen shot (you can use Imgur for this).

Hi, thanks for this add-in, really handy for the tag editor, AND multi-disc sort.Just a thought, if the disc number is 1 of 1 (and only 1), I don't think it's quite useful to display the disc number as part of the track number...

Also, without the plug-in, in Artist or Album view, I can press a letter and it will jump to the section starting with that letter.With the plug-in, pressing a letter puts you automatically into search mode so I can't do that anymore.

Just a thought, if the disc number is 1 of 1 (and only 1), I don't think it's quite useful to display the disc number as part of the track number...

Then the disc number tag itself is quite useless for that track. Why not just remove the disc number from the track?

QUOTE

Also, without the plug-in, in Artist or Album view, I can press a letter and it will jump to the section starting with that letter.With the plug-in, pressing a letter puts you automatically into search mode so I can't do that anymore.

You can disable 'Find as you type' in the plug-in's settings: Tools - Plug-in properties - Windows Media Player Plus! (press Ctrl+M if you don't see the Tools menu).

Just a thought, if the disc number is 1 of 1 (and only 1), I don't think it's quite useful to display the disc number as part of the track number...

Then the disc number tag itself is quite useless for that track. Why not just remove the disc number from the track?

I have used a few different applications over the years to rip my CDs. It just seems that a lot of them have set the disc number. I would need to do a massive job of removing all these tags. It can be done. I just figured that usually, since the point of these enhancements is to simplify our lives, I would take it into account in the code.

I recently installed Windows 8 and I installed Windows Media Player Plus!. I'm not getting the tag editor when I right click on a song. The plug in is active and other features of the plug in are working such as changing the title bar of WMP to show the song playing. Please Help.

This is most likely because the latest release of WMP Plus! doesn't really support Windows 8 yet. The soon-to-be-released WMP Plus! 2.5 will support Windows 8.

Hi Tim,

Your plug-in seems to be exactly what I need. What I'm most interested in is the tag editor. But I couldn't even try it out because I happen to have the same problem as grimmis188 has (even though I downloaded version 2.5). I'm using WMP 12 on Windows 8 64 bit.

If the plug-in is loaded, make sure that the song that you're right-clicking is in WMP's library (this is required for Tag Editor Plus to appear).

Hi Tim,

Problem fixed! You're a KING.

Since I'm about to record quite a few records, I was testing different tag solutions for FLAC files among which was WMP PLUS. So I did not put any file in my Library. From the moment i did put one test file, everything worked fine.

So, from now on, WMP PLUS is no longer one among the solutions. It is THE solution I adopt.

Since I installed WMP plus (on Windows 7 Home, WMP version 12) I have regularly experienced a problem where WMP will play a few songs and then return a "Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file" message and stop playing. In the playlist, the songs that it claims to have failed to played will ave the little red circle with a cross in next to their name.

If I close WMP and restart it and try and play the exact same songs, it will do so - but will then fail again a few songs later in the same way.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this and how it could be fixed?

If you click on the little red circle next to a song and select Error details, what's the full text of the message that appears?

Do you still experience the problem if you disable WMP Plus by unchecking it in the Tools - Plug-ins menu? (press Ctrl+M if you don't see the Tools menu).

Thanks for the prompt reply. To answer your questions:1) yes, using version 2.52) its all types of files - not one particular type3) Error details: full text is just "Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file."4) yes, it still happens if plugin is disabled

It tends to go rapidly through five files, decide each is unplayable, and then give up (I know this as five consecutive files have the red cross next to them in the playlist)

The problem with Web help is that you immediately get redirected to another URL that contains less info. So would it be possible to click Web help again, but this time with your Internet connection disabled? This will prevent the redirect from happening and allow you to retrieve the full URL with all error details. Thanks!

The problem with Web help is that you immediately get redirected to another URL that contains less info. So would it be possible to click Web help again, but this time with your Internet connection disabled? This will prevent the redirect from happening and allow you to retrieve the full URL with all error details. Thanks!

Sorry for the late reply here - not needed to use windows media player in the last few days. I can now confirm the problem *does* go away if I uninstall WMP Plus.

I will now reinstall again and will report back on whether the problem comes back; and if it does, I'll post the error message